I know what you’re thinking—it isn’t possible. Could this really be a new WPCandy Podcast? Indeed it is. After a shamefully long gap since the last podcast we’re back at it, this time joined by the newest contributor to WPCandy, Daniel Immke. In this episode we discuss the Quarterly a bit (by the way, pre-order yours), WordPress 3.3 RC1, WordAds, and a couple of fun stories that popped up in the last week or so.

Jump straight into the podcast audio here:

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Daniel: The checks we use on the theme uploader process are the same ones you can get from running the Theme Check plugin on your theme, on your own development site.

The reason we have some of those checks for things such as tags are simply because if you don’t support them, then the users of your theme could be confused and not understand why their tags don’t show up. That sort of thing.

Honestly, the required theme checks are really very, very minimal. We’ve allowed special cases through before (and are working to make this more streamlines for special cases), but really any theme meant for public consumption should be able to pass the required parts of the automated theme check.

On the whole, I also think that theme check like this forces theme developers to step back and rethink things sometimes. Like, why don’t you support Tags? I mean, is it so hard to add a single line to the single post page to show the tags underneath the post? Things like that. The things in the theme check listed as “required” as *super* minimal, really. Most of the theme reviewers I’ve talked to really think it should be more strict.

For my own use in testing, I once made a test theme that contained the absolute minimum requirements to get through the theme check (for my own testing of the uploader). It was under 800 bytes.

Also note that the theme check output is generally quite huge, but only the red items are required elements. Lots of recommended elements are also listed, mainly to force the theme developer to think about them before submitting. You don’t have to fulfill all the recommended elements, but maybe it’s a good idea to think about them anyway.

If you have issues with any specific theme check result, then by all means bring it up on the theme reviewers mailing list. Be prepared for some discussion though. The theme check results come more or less directly from the theme review guidelines, so talking about those results is really talking about whether the guidelines should be required or not, sort of thing.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. This was back in (I think) April so things could have changed or I might have misinterpreted the readout.

Tags were the first thing that came to mind, but to be honest I don’t remember exactly what the issue was. You might be able to go back through the archives and see mine. The name of the theme was Submarine and it was in April of this year. Hopefully I wasn’t just a sloppy mess and I’m remembering with rose colored glasses. If that’s the case I will issue a retraction and apology on the next podcast.

Specifics aside, my main point was that I thought some of the features that were being required (if they were indeed being required and I didn’t misread) didn’t necessarily have a place in every theme, and I was talking about events that happened months and months ago so it’s definitely possible that I overstated things.

Oh, I wasn’t criticizing. I started the Theme Check plugin (and gave it to pross who went crazy with adding checks to it) mainly because I didn’t like the theme review process when I went through it for the first time either. But I think it’s much better now, and while the language might need some work (it’s pretty matter-of-fact about things), it’s definitely better than it was before. At least you can’t submit a theme and then have to wait for it to get failed because of those basic things, it will tell you right up front. That is a big improvement, IMO.

Maybe it would be good to get Daniel, Otto, me, and if possible, Justin on a podcast in the near future, and we can discuss. I think there are some misconceptions and misunderstanding that all of us would love to help clear up.